With an incoming college president and two new vice-presidents, three long-held seats on the board of trustees are up for grabs.

Combined with the groundbreaking of the senior care center and other improvements, these changes promise vast challenges and opportunities for college and surrounding communities.

At the same time, it seems nothing much changes from year to year.

Several coaches are suing the school for “wrongful disciplinary actions” as a backlash means of diverting attention from their own departmental mismanagement activities.

Two longstanding members of the college community have left amid a torrent of gossip and innuendo regarding their personal lives away from campus.

Hack writers on a local paper spew inflammatory yellow journalism incessantly about the college and its members.

As if the legal and moral wrangling of the institution were not enough, there are other problems on campus to be concerned about.

College communities are traditional strongholds of democratic idealism and political change, yet circulated polls and petitions remain unsigned and unnoticed.

Many instructor evaluations last semester came back incomplete, illegible or did not come back at all.

Impacted classes are filled to overflowing by students who drop in the middle of the semester, leaving other students without seats.

These are not new concerns. Rather, they are merely symptoms of a larger plague of apathy and an overwhelming attitude of “I can’t make any difference” infecting modern American society.

The public cries “foul” when elected officials commit illegal or immoral acts, have sex with interns and then lie to investigators. Does anybody care enough to kick Gary Condit out of office and replace him with somebody decent? Did enough people care enough to kick out Bill Clinton?

During the last presidential election, the fate of the nation hung on just a few hundred contested votes in a handful of Florida counties. It seems a few votes made a difference there.

Yet how many armchair quarterbacks are willing to rise up out of their comfy couches, dust the cheesy puffs off their beer guts and do something to make a change for the better?

If the board of trustees is doing such a bad job running the school, then why do they keep getting re-elected to office? If the college is not meeting the needs of the community and its students, then why hasn’t anybody done something about it.

If something is broken, then why doesn’t somebody fix it?

Two incumbents and four challengers will be running for three seats on the board of trustee this fall. We as a community need to make these people understand our desires regarding classes and instructors, parking and student services.

We must have a forum where they can express their views and make commitments to the residents of this community. Next, the voters need to be willing to actually go to out and vote… and then to hold those elected officials accountable for their actions.

A democracy only works when all its citizens participate in the governance of their community and nation. If the community is not participating in its own governance, then the people are only getting what they deserve when they get substandard representation.

It is easy to bitch and complain, it is hell of a lot harder to go out and make a difference.